Gardeners’ World – July 2024

Slugs and snails are eating things they never ate before! The new slug pellets are wool based and don’t have much effect. To control the damage on hostas, try crushing a clove of garlic in boiling water, strain, and spray the liquid weekly. Take cuttings from penstemon, salvia and dianthus. I have been using just perlite, planting the cuttings round the edge of the pot and keeping them moist. When the roots appear at the bottom, pot them up in compost.

Keep deadheading roses, cutting to a bud which will shoot again and produce a second flowering. Cut oriental poppies and lupins down to the ground. Feed with Fish, Blood & Bone and they will produce new growth and flowers. Cut off the dead flowers from peonies which won’t flower again this year.

Tie sweet peas onto canes or twiggy supports. Cut the flowers regularly. If you let them seed, they weaken the plant and shorten the flowering period. Liquid feed tomatoes once a week and remove leaves below the first fruit and any side shoots, but not the bush variety. Yellowing leaves mean a shortage of magnesium and feeding with Epsom salts will help.